


The Moon's Pearl

by skysonfire



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Anti-Hero, Backstory, Black Pearl - Freeform, Butcher of the Sea, Capitán Salazar, Dead Men Tell No Tales - Freeform, Earth, El Matador Del Mar, F/M, Flying Dutchman, Island - Freeform, Isle of Stars, Javier Bardem - Freeform, Moon, Ocean, One Shot, Pirates, Rapier, Sea, Silent Mary, Spanish Royal Navy, Spanish fairytale, Tomb of Poseidon, Trident of Poseidon, Undead, devil's triangle, ghost - Freeform, pirates of the caribbean - Freeform, pirates of the caribbean one shot, seven seas, sparrow - Freeform, sun - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 03:56:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11096388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skysonfire/pseuds/skysonfire
Summary: Post-curse, Salazar's love waits for him on a rainy beach. Amid her waiting, she remembers an encounter years prior when life (and death) wasn't as complicated or desperate. During this encounter, Salazar tells her a Spanish fairytale, which may or may not have real-world validity.





	The Moon's Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> Typically, my one-shots featuring a particular character have a central vein running throughout. Normally, they involve the same OC, and are in some way related, or part of a series.
> 
> This is my attempt at crafting a little bit of a backstory for Armando Salazar and his lady of particular interest. The timeline is in advance of the previous one shot I wrote called, "Painful Delay."
> 
> I hope you enjoy. Cheers!

Morning teases the white sand of the beach, but there will be no sun today as the rain punishes both the land and the sea. Her ears are filled with splashing; the crying waters of the sky assaulting the wide palm leaves, and the surf washing angrily against the rocks of the reef.

She’s waited all night. The hours have drenched her completely, and she shivers despite the warm, humid air. She rubs her hands together and wicks sopping strands away from her face. He didn’t come. Her breathing becomes a short rasp in her chest. Panic. Sunrise would disqualify their chances at a full moon meeting. She considers that her worst fears have finally come true. He’s forgotten her. He would no longer come. He was lost to all the anger of his curse — spun down from the proud and valiant man she had once known. The hardened commander highlighted by a secret softness reserved only for her in their private moments.

Turning away from the graying surf, she considers the shelter of the beach, a place that she knows too well, but not alone. She had led him to the secluded location for the first time years ago in the pitch dark of night. The sky was a velvet blanket spattered with the brightest stars and stained with such a fine, beckoning moon. He held fast to her hand; she could see him considering her in her periphery and it made her heart gallop. She had no business with a Spaniard, least of all one that had come prior to wage war on her father’s country, and yet, under such a wild night sky, there they stood in the sand at what felt like the end of all the worlds.

“Sometimes I think the moon must be in love with the Earth,” she said, quietly, breaking through the puffing of their labored breaths. He slowed his stride and smiled.  
“In love, eh?” He queried, playfully.

“Well, yes. On some nights she comes in so close, I think she’ll crash into the Earth. On other nights, she is far away.” She paused. “Maybe they are forbidden lovers, meeting one another only in the dark on certain nights. She is brightest when she is close, and I wonder if it’s because she feels him near. When she is far away, her light is sometimes a quivering halo. It feels like … longing.”

Having realized that she lost her gaze to the sea, she reset her attention toward her current company. “I’m sorry, Capitán. I shouldn’t lose myself in such nonsense. It’s silly and childish, naturally.”

His eyes were set on her face. He removed his captain’s coat and spread it carefully across the sand. He motioned kindly for her to sit, which she did, her mind racing and her blood surging. He took his place close to her, his hip touching hers, and he studied the surf pensively before speaking.

“When I was a young boy, my father used to tell me a story about the sun and the moon.”

No longer feeling as foolish, she pivoted her body to behold him with her full face. He was broad in every way — the spread of his shoulders, the spacing of his cheekbones, the distance navigated across the bridge of his nose, the angular jut of his chin, his easy, reclined forehead. She watched his lips carefully as he spoke, her ears still growing accustomed to the native sounds of his tongue. He would worry at his bottom lip for just a fraction of a moment when he paused his speech, and she wondered whether it was because he was checking his words or his tone, or if it was because she made his heart barrel on in the same way he affected her own.

He touched at a lose strand of her honeyed hair and pushed it back, his fingertips running along the shine of her neck.

“My father told me that the sun and the moon were in love, and their love bore a daughter. Realizing no time to spare for her, they gave her human form and provided her a home by the ocean’s side to live out her days.”

“That’s very sad,” she responded, and he chortled slightly at her lament.

“You see, this celestial daughter was beautiful beyond compare and she had magical powers. Every month her mother would visit her and bath her in silver light to temper her warmth from the sun. She was content there, but … lonely.” 

He stopped to drag his palm along the delicate skin of her forearm. Leaning toward her, he placed his lips at her throat and she wove her hands up into his hair at the base of his skull, forcing lose the ribbon keeping all the strands in place. A breeze stirred, scented by aromatics — jasmine and brine and earth. Catching the air, his hair swirled about her face — soft tendrils like sea grasses swaying in a gentle tide.

“What happened to the sun and moon’s daughter, Armando?” She murmured, but instead of an answer, his mouth covered hers with a kiss that felt like pure heat. He moved his lips rhythmically and her mouth parted to receive him deeply.

Her senses heightened, her ears were full of thrumming, and she couldn’t be sure if it was her heart’s beating or the surf’s incessant swelling and crashing. In those moments she lost herself and desire propelled her movements. She reached inside his vest and grasped at the flesh that covered his sinewy definition. He deftly unfastened her dress and lifted her onto his lap, her knees pushing hard into the sand on either side of his hips.

Her eyes caught the moon once more as he contended with the laces and cotton and satin that separated them. She pushed her hips into him and her eyelashes brushed against the tops of her cheeks as she closed her eyes and he sheathed himself effortlessly inside her. Her jaw slacked at the immense pressure between her legs, but before she could steady herself amid the beating and pulsing, he wrapped his arm about her waist and rocked into her, driving deeply into her center. She grasped desperately against his shoulders and cried into the night. The burn of him against her growing slick was a fury; he watched her to see the desire on her face and a furrow developed in his brow — one that suggested struggle to hold fast.

“Please don’t stop,” she begged, her voice a stranger’s in her throat. And so he kept on, making her buck and writhe until she needed to beg him in the other direction, but only after the sun began to break over the horizon.

Wrapped up in him, her arm outstretched on the cool sand, she allowed her pulse to steady before speaking.

“Armando?” She queried.

“Aro,” he responded. “You will call me Aro now, eh?” And she smiled against his flesh.

“Aro, you didn’t tell me what happened to the moon’s daughter.”

He huffed with amusement against her hair. “They say the king of Spain married her.”

And with that, he helped her upright, smoothing her hair and touching at the flush of her cheek.

“Do you think that’s true?” She asked, playfully, straightening his shirt.

He held to her with eyes like warm amber, and a specific seriousness overcame him that made her uncertain of her balance.

“No, amore.” He kissed her gently, offering into her hand a small token from the pocket of his coat — a perfect pearl, gleaming like moonlight in the sunlight.

It was with the pearl that he left her, never to set foot upon their beach except for dark and wet footsteps in the surf — the oppressive weight of his curse all about them in the stormy foam, rending against their legs as they embraced hurriedly. This, though, was the first time he hadn’t come when she set her feet in the water, waiting on the edge of his existence and hers. 

Exhausted and tied up in devastation’s grasp, her tears join with the rain — a dripping brackish sadness that falls to the sand and disappears, like so many drops of moisture in the sea.

She reaches into her pocket and grips the pearl tightly in her fist, and she wishes hard for the moon.


End file.
